1. In 2002, according to Armstrong’s ex-teammate, Christian Vande Velde,

Armstrong told Vande Velde that if he
wanted to continue to ride for the Postal Service team he “would have to
use what Dr. [Michele] Ferrari had been telling [Vande Velde] to use
and would have to follow Dr. Ferrari’s program to the letter.” Vande
Velde said, “[t]he conversation left me with no question that I was in
the doghouse and that the only way forward with Armstrong’s team was to
get fully on Dr. Ferrari’s doping program.”

2. At the 2004 Tour de France, after cyclist Filippo Simeoni testified against Dr. Ferrari,

Armstrong rode [Simeoni] down and
threatened [that] if Simeoni did not return to the peloton Lance
Armstrong would stay with the break and doom it to failure … As Simeoni
and Armstrong fell back to the peloton, Armstrong verbally berated
Simeoni for testifying in the Ferrari case, saying, “You made a mistake
when you testified against Ferrari and you made a mistake when you sued
me. I have a lot of time and money and I can destroy you.” Armstrong was
captured on video making a “zip the lips” gesture which underscored
what Armstrong had just said to Simeoni about how Simeoni should not
have testified against Dr. Ferrari.

3. In 2005, after fellow riders Jonathan Vaughters and Frankie Andreu

exchanged text messages in which they
discussed doping on the U.S. Postal Service team, Mr. Vaughters’ texts
became an exhibit in [a court] proceeding. … Since that time, Mr.
Vaughters’ employer, Slipstream Sports, has received several phone calls
from Mr. Armstrong suggesting that Mr. Vaughters should be removed from
the management of Slipstream Sports.

4. According to Armstrong’s former teammate, Tyler Hamilton,

after Mr. Hamilton had testified about Mr.
Armstrong’s doping and after Mr. Hamilton’s cooperation with federal
law enforcement officials had been publicly reported, on June 11, 2011,
Mr. Hamilton was physically accosted by Mr. Armstrong in an Aspen,
Colorado restaurant. … Mr. Armstrong said, “When you’re on the witness
stand, we are going to fucking tear you apart. You are going to look
like a fucking idiot.” … “I’m going to make your life a living … fucking
… hell.”

In his interview with Winfrey, Armstrong categorically denied that
any riders had been pressured to dope: “The idea that anybody was forced
or pressured or encouraged is not true.” When Winfrey asked Armstrong
whether he had been the real boss of his team, he replied evasively:
“Well, I was the top rider. I was the leader of the team. I wasn’t the
manager, the general manager, the director.” He went on: “There was
never a direct order, or a directive to say, ‘You have to do this if you
want to do the Tour, if you want to be on the team.’ That never
happened. It was a competitive time. We were all grown men. We all made
our choices.”

Winfrey asked Armstrong about Vande Velde’s claim “that you
threatened to kick him off the team if he didn’t shape up and conform to
the doping program.” Armstrong shot back, “That’s not true.” Instead,
Armstrong softened the story into a matter of setting the wrong example:
“But even if I don’t say it, if I do it, and I’m the leader of the
team, you’re leading by example, so that’s a problem.” With this
maneuver—deflection disguised as contrition—Armstrong reduced the charge
of coercion to a plea of doping. He pointed out “the difference between
that and saying, ‘You have to do this if you want to do the Tour or
stay on this team.’ … I view one of them as a verbal pressure, as a
directive. And that didn’t exist.”

Armstrong couldn’t deny all the lawsuits he had filed and all the
times he'd accused people of lying. So he attributed these intimidation
tactics to fear, a rough childhood, and his cancer. He had vilified
witnesses who told the truth because he saw them “as a friend turning on
you.” He had attacked any threat because when he was a kid, his family
“felt like we had our backs against the wall.” And, tragically, “my
diagnosis … turned me into a person” who was resolved to “win at all
costs,” since cancer compels you to “do anything I have to do to
survive. … And I took that attitude, that ruthless and relentless and
win-at-all costs attitude, and I took it right into cycling.”

That seems to be the game plan Armstrong brought to this interview.
Downplay your power over others. Deny issuing explicit orders to dope.
Convert any such story into a matter of setting a poor example. Take
responsibility for yourself, but suggest that others—those who claim you
pressured them—must do the same. Recast your threats, retributions, and
demands for silence as products of a hard life. Reduce your sins of
coercion to a sin of deceit. When Winfrey asked Armstrong “what made you
a bully,” he answered: “Just trying to perpetuate the story and hide
the truth.”

That’s Armstrong’s message: Everything he did, no matter how
domineering, menacing, or manipulative, was a desperate effort to
protect a single lie. “I tried to control the narrative,” he says. And
he’s still trying to control the narrative. Which is a good reason not
to believe it.